


that wolf under your bedsheets

by flaky_artist



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-20
Updated: 2012-11-20
Packaged: 2017-11-19 02:38:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 345
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/568120
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flaky_artist/pseuds/flaky_artist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She tells stories of the way things were.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that wolf under your bedsheets

**Author's Note:**

> Post-series AU

It scares her when it happens, how quickly and easy she falls into place in his world. There's supposed to be an order to these things, she muses into the unnatural coolness of a summer's night. Water and fire - "We are opposite" - her body curling soft and comfortable against his sharp lines.

(zuko clutches her tight, doesn't say _we were never opposite enough_ )

She moves on, she thinks, and she laughs sometimes - and maybe sometimes she thinks too much, about what the world will become without the Avatar. And she thinks, if the world wants to fall apart she'll be there to put it back together - 

Katara the healer, Katara the rock, Katara the saint

\- and sometimes _it's just too much._ It spills out when she's not careful, angry words spun into skinny blue tendrils, and her voice cracks like ice - like something else entirely.

(and zuko - zuko swallows and says nothing because he would never do anything to hurt her - _not again_ \- and he knows the difference between katara wanting to argue and katara just needing someone to yell at)

But there's new life, she thinks, life growing inside her as the world is reborn, a world that's different now because there's good in it, her husband and her children and this adopted nation of hers who just need a nudge in the right direction.

She tells stories of the way things _were,_ and she burns bright amongst the red-black-gold - burns blue like a terrible cold fire. She watches her children grow and sometimes she says "They look like you" - like his side of the family - 

but oh how their eyes shine bright

\- and sometimes Zuko winces.

She's the only one who thinks about it, about how the world is all wrong. Water, earth, fire, and sometimes she can't _breathe_ -

Katara the mother, Katara the protector, and she tells herself without the Avatar she's the only one who can save the world

\- Katara the _vengeful._

(and zuko, quiet zuko holds her tight and it scares him just how much like _fire_ she really is)


End file.
